J'

UST before going on to the Progressive Service League meeting at Philadelphia last March, I happened to read some articles on the boys and girls of the High School and their problems, by Principal Lewis, of the Penn High School. Every man and woman interested in boys and girls -and what man or woman is not ?--ought to read what Principal Lewis himself says; for no brief sketch of mine will do even the remotest justice to the way in which he grips and expounds the vital need of our high school and college education-the need that it shall relate to life, and shall offer to each divergent soul the chance that soul needs to train itself, along its own lines, for useful citizenship, domestic and public, in this great seething, straining democracy of ours. All I am trying to do is to make my readers go to Principal Lewis themselves; and what I say is drawn from what he has told me.

Irene Litchman is President of the Students' Association in a girls' high school that is trying to teach citizenship along with its languages, mathematics, et al. Under her leadership the student body of two thousand girls has become practically self-governing without any formal organization or systematic monitorial or police system either of faculty or students. Those girls have developed a community consciousness that will probably contribute as much to their value as citizens as a thorough understanding of the subjunctive in indirect discourse. Remember, I am not running down the subjunctive; I am merely exalting the community conscious

ness!

Miss Litchman is an A student-in other words, her standing in all her studies has averaged 90 per cent, or better, for four years. She has become interested in social work and wants to go to college, but she cannot go. Why?

She has had only one foreign language. If she goes to college-for she is not wealthy --she must go to the one in her home city. That college will not admit her to its liberal arts course without preparation in two languages.

Bulletin No. 7, just issued by the United States Bureau of Education, discusses the

case of Irene and of several thousand other girls and boys in our high schools whose possibilities of preparation for lives of the largest usefulness are being limited by the lack of adjustment between the public high school and the college. This bulletin is a study of the entrance conditions of 204 Colleges of Liberal Arts, 85 Colleges of Engineering, and 31 Colleges of Agriculture, by Clarence D. Kingsley, agent of the State Board of Education of Massachusetts, and chairman of the National Education Association committee on the Articulation of High School and College.

The report of this committee in July, 1911, showed how the demands for entrance to college were making it impossible for the high schools to perform their proper service of training in the larger citizenship. The bulletin just issued by the National Bureau of Education shows the chaotic divergence of these demands, and at the same time serves as a clearing-house that may aid the colleges in formulating saner requirements.

A unit represents a year's work in a subject. The following table shows some interesting contradictions in college entrance requirements:

Subject.

More than two and one-half units in mathematics..... Seventh unit of foreign language...

Colleges

Colleges prescrib ing it.

It

Every high school of any size has pupils preparing for several different colleges. is, therefore, easy to see the difficulty entailed by this divergence in requirements.

An interesting and encouraging table shows that many subjects not formerly included within the pale of academic respectability are coming to be recognized. For example, drawing is counted for entrance in 124 colleges, shop-work in 97, economics in 92, business training in 88, agriculture in 80, and the home-loving academic infant, household economics, in 79. The list of colleges accepting household economics does not include one of the more important women's colleges of the East, such as Barnard, Wellesley, Vas

sar. Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, and Goucher. Now, I thoroughly believe in these colleges. They teach many thingsamong others the love of beauty; and no man or woman can lead a full life who does not love beauty, whether in nature, in art, in literature, whether the beauty be that of great forests, of dim cathedrals, of haunting music, of wonderful paintings, or of the poets we can all read, and the birds and flowers that are at the doors of so many of us. But usefulness comes even before beauty, and no man or woman has a right to enjoy beauty unless he or she can pay for it by some kind of useful work. Once I stopped at the house of a farmer friend at harvest time, and became worried about the haggard looks of the farmer's overworked wife. After inquiry of my friend himself why he didn't substitute for one of his hired men a hired girl, as an obvious act of justice to his wife, I asked the latter why her daughters did not help her. "Oh." she replied, in perfect good faith, "they can't work; they're educated." Well, this always struck me as a fine example of what education should not be. Contrast it with the case of one Southern woman of whom I know-a college graduate, devoted to books and flowers; not of large means; and she runs a farm, is bringing up her eight children, and is the great social and industrial influence for good in her neighborhood. That is the kind of college product worth producing!

The Bulletin shows at a glance the attitude of each of the 204 colleges listed. Among the most liberal are some of the great institutions of the country, notably Harvard, Chicago, Leland Stanford Junior, Clark, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This bulletin will make it easy for high school principals to distinguish between those institutions that do and those that do not recognize themselves as an integral part of the democratic educational machinery of the country, and to advise their pupils accordingly.

The report of Mr. Kingsley's committee, above referred to, gives the following valuable summary of the conditions which make the present bulletin of such vital importance :

Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, in his Annual Report of the Carnegie Foundation, finds that American education, from elementary school to college, is suffering from the attempt to teach too many subjects to the same student at the same time. He believes that students taking the newer subjects should not

be required to carry all the older subjects. He states emphatically that this is no argument against the enriched curriculum of the high school; but that, on the contrary, the high school must go on still further enriching its curriculum, and that it is the duty of the college to adjust itself to the high school thus broadened.

"It is the duty of the tax-supported high school to give every student instruction carefully designed to return to society intelligent, able-bodied, and progressive citizens. Moreover, hard work is to be secured, not by insistence upon uniformity of tastes and interests, but by the encouragement of special effort along lines that appeal to the individual. Our education would gain in power and in virility if we made more of the dominant interest that each boy and gin has at the time. The boy who pursues both the liberal and the vocational sees the relation of his own work to the work of others and to the welfare of society; whereas the liberal without the vocational leaves him a mere spectator in the theater of life, and the boxes in this theater are already overcrowded.

ކ

"Mechanic arts, agriculture, or household science should be recognized as rational elements in the education of all boys and girls, and especially of those who have not as yet chosen their vocation. Under the authority of the traditional conception of the best preparation for a higher institution, many of our public high schools are to-day responsible for leading tens of thousands of boys and girls away from the pursuits for which they are adapted and in which they are needed, to other pursuits for which they are not adapted and in which they are not needed. By means/ of exclusively bookish curricula false ideals of culture are developed. A chasm is created between the producers of material wealth and the distributers and consumers thereof.

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The high school should in a real sense reflect the major industries of the community which supports it. The high school, as the local educational institution, should reveal to boys and girls the higher possibilities for more efficient service along the lines in which their own community is industrially organized.

"Our traditional ideals of preparation for higher institutions are particularly incongruous with the actual needs and future responsibilities of girls. It would seem that suchhigh school work as is carefully designed to develop capacity for and interest in the proper management and conduct of a home

should be regarded as of importance at least equal to that of any other work. We do not understand how society can properly continue to sanction high school curricula for girls which disregard this fundamental need, even though such curricula are planned in response to the demand made by some of the colleges for women."

I need hardly say that I am not decrying cultural education. I believe in it with all my heart. But I believe that it comes second, and a long way second, to training along lines of social and industrial usefulness; and, furthermore, I believe that the effort should be made to meet the widely varying individual needs of each individual boy or girl.

T

HERE is a quaint picture of a little

Japanese village, snow-bound, by that very human painter Hiroshige, that gives one a sense of remoteness from the rush of action, of a kind of aside in the vehement talk of the world very engaging to one who is entangled in the tumult of Tokyo, or still hears in the distance the clang of New York, the "central roar" of London, or the sharp staccato of Paris. The fragility of the little group of houses is emphasized by the weight of snow which rests on them, and the three or four people who move about convey a sense of the noiselessness with which the business of life is being transacted that day in those little houses shut in from the weather by sliding screens of rice-paper. The little hamlet is folded away from the world in that "tumultuous privacy of storm" which Emerson loved in Concord, where the solid house standing four square among the trees was a visible symbol of New England grip on the material as well as the spiritual realities. One can imagine the quiet of the library to which the mind of the Orient always found ready access, and one can rebuild the cheerful fire before which on winter nights the solitary Thoreau found congenial comradeship in the boys who were quick to recognize his intimacy with birds and animals and his command of the secrets of woodcraft.

In these little Japanese houses there is no master of philosophy sitting by a cheerful fire, but there are men and women who accept the simplest conditions of living without murmur, and there are children in heerfulness is not only inbred but

inwrought; who seem to be born under a cheerful star, and who have been trained to bear pain with fortitude and to endure hardship with a smile. It is not true that in Japan babies never cry, any more than it is true that in Japan flowers have no perfume; but it is true that crying is rarely heard in the Japanese home. To the question why babies cry so little in this country the significant answer was made, "We teach our children to be patient;" a form of education rarely found, it is to be feared, in American homes.

Those little houses which Hiroshige loved to paint are so fragile that fire or flood consumes them with appalling rapidity; but the shock of the earthquake, which is a daily occurrence in some parts of the country, leaves them practically uninjured. One Japanese writer has described his country as "vibrant ;” and when one remembers that the daily average of earthquakes in the Empire is four and a half, the adjective takes on scientific accuracy; and the ancient myth that the islands rest on a fish which sometimes tires of its position seems a reasonable explanation.

The foreigner who comes from cities piled high with massive structures of granite and marble is struck at once in Japan by the fragility of the houses of the people who work with their hands, and is quite likely to rush to the conclusion that as are the houses so are the people who live in them. We of the West write our histories on the surface of the earth with heavy hands, and imagine that bulk of material is the register of civilization; and when a Hindu or Japanese

comes our way and shows no interest in our sky-scrapers, we are amazed at his lack of appreciation, and do not understand that he has other standards of civilization.

In Hiroshige's village the walls of the houses are translucent, and at night, seen from a distance, they look like a cluster of great lanterns. They have only two or three rooms, are quickly built and easily repaired, and cost less than a hundred dollars. As a rule, they have no furniture beyond a chest of drawers; the larder is often stocked, but it hangs in baskets from the ceiling. The beds are rolled up and put out of sight in the daytime. In some houses there is a square opening in the floor in one of the rooms, in which the fire-box stands, and there the food is cooked. The laundry is done out of doors; in some localities a stream of hot water flows through the village. The food is largely fish, of which there is great abundance; rice, which is the principal product of the country; and vegetables from the little fields which are part of every farm and surround every village. Foremost among these is the daikon, a long white radish of evil odor but not unpalatable, and greatly valued as a digestive corrective of a diet which is heavily weighted with starch.

There is some variety of color, but uniformity of style, in the dress both of men and women. The kimonos of the poorer people do not change with the fashion nor even with the season; as it gets colder, more kimonos are put on. The men who work in the fields and in the cities look very like the men of the same class who appear in Shakespeare's plays; they wear a kind of smock, or blouse, generally blue in color, with trousers of the same material, which fit the leg like the old pantaloon. It is a more serviceable dress for work than ours, and much more artistic. Straw sandals, sometimes with a divided footcovering, but often without it, protect the feet and in rain or mud a raised wooden sandal lifts the wearer above the slush. Babies are never left at home, apparently, in the houses of the poorer people, but are carried on the backs of their mothers or of the older children; and a good many men share this duty.

On cold days the hibachi, or fire-box, in which coals of charcoal glow, is placed on the floor but the house is never warm in cold weather. There is probably no really warm Japanese house in Japan; warmth is matter of clothes, not of artificial heating. This is true only of the houses built in the Japanese

fashion; houses built in the foreign fashion are numerous among the Japanese of fortune, especially those who entertain foreigners, and many of these are not only beautiful, but very comfortable in the matter of temperature. But in Japanese houses of all grades, and in Japanese hotels, heat is a matter of choice; if you wish to be warm you must bring the warmth with you.

The

Out of doors in wet or snowy weather the man of the little farm or village house wears a large straw hat which looks very like a big bowl, and a nondescript waterproof garment of straw which the farmers and men of the mountains have worn for centuries. Indoors, on wet days, the women devote themselves to home industries-to the making of matting and of rope, to spinning and weaving. house is kept with the greatest neatness; and while the surroundings are sometimes very objectionable, cleanliness reigns supreme within. In Japan the bath is a national institution, and provision is made for it everywhere at a nominal expense. Foreigners who bring the tradition of the cold bath with them, and regard warm water as a compromise with effeminacy, soon discover that the hot bath, which is universal in Japan, seems specially adapted to the climate and has a kind of medicinal value. Those travelers from the West who bring their national habits and traditions with them, and refuse to follow the customs of the country, soon discover that the Japanese seem to possess a superior knowledge of their own country; though a few never reach this advanced stage of enlightenment, and decline to recognize differences in climate which, if ignored, sooner or later have their revenge. The thermometer in Japan needs interpretation almost as much as the language of the country; it rarely registers a very low temperature, but it often produces the effect of a very low temperature. There is a saying in Tokyo that it is "warmer by the thermometer and colder by the overcoat" than in other parts of the world. The climate is in fact, like Japan itself, a kind of middle term between the East and the West; the extremes are not great, but the dampness generates a penetrating chill in winter and a disheartening humidity in summer. It is very like the English climate carried to excess. It is not an unwholesome climate, though its lack of stimulus compels foreigners to take a slower pace than at home.

The sun is the central heating plant in

Japan, and in selecting a site for a house exposure to the sunshine is the determining factor. The rooms into which the morning sun pours its rays are soon warm, and the genial temperature continues until a cloud shuts out the light and heat. The "poor man's furnace," which so aptly describes the Lung' Arno in Florence on which idlers and beggars bask, describes also the sides of the roads and streets in Japan which lie within the glow of the sun; and the difference between sunlight and shadow is almost as marked as in Italy on wintry days.

In the little houses of the poor there is at least one room which is matted; this is raised a foot or more above the level of the street, and a row of wooden or straw sandals await those who are going out or coming in; for in the palace or the humblest house the footcovering worn in the streets never touches the soft and scrupulously clean matting. The floor in a Japanese house is not only a place to walk on but to sit on, and, often, to use as a table. The kettle is always simmering on the hibachi, or fire-box, and the good old song which directs Polly to "put the kettle on" has no meaning in a country in which the kettle is always in service. It sometimes gives a touch of domesticity to the little room which serves as an improvised chapel for a Christian service. The Japanese who returns from a visit to Europe or America will tell you that the first sound which gives him a vivid sense of home is the clatter of the wooden sandals on the platform of the station as he leaves the train. He will also tell you that there are sounds which always recall his childhood: the sound of the wooden screens which are pushed back when the house is opened to let in the morning, the soft whish of the long feather duster with which the housemaids greet the day, and the hiss of escaping steam from the kettle.

In the little village home life is very simple and housekeeping is reduced to first principles. Fresh fish, often eaten raw and regarded as a delicacy even by the gourmet, rice, beans in many forms, and other vegeta

bles, furnish the staple diet, with many small cups of tea; if the head of the family is a laborer or a mechanic, he is off early, for his hours are long and his wages are meager; and the children are soon noisily clattering along the road to the long, many-windowed school-house which is as characteristic of the Japan of to-day as the long flights of stone steps climbing to temples hidden among the trees are of the Japan of yesterday. Every child old enough to study books has a little bundle neatly wrapped in gayly colored cloth, for bundles are never carried in paper wrappings in Japan. If you go into the school, the children will pay no heed to you until their attention is called to your presence; then they will all rise and bow gravely to you in perfect unison. The teachers will tell you that they delight in coming to school and need no urging to be studious. In old days they would have grown quietly into acceptance of the state of life in which they were born; to-day the more ambitious and capable may go far on the road to education; for the expense of college and even of university education' is incredibly small to one accustomed to the American scale. Eighty dollars a year will carry the frugal boy through college.

There may be few books in the little house, although books are cheap; but newspapers are read everywhere by all sorts of people, and the little village is no longer isolated; it talks politics and knows what is going on in Tokyo. Its houses are fragile and easily erased from the face of the earth. Of the million people who once lived in Kamakura there are practically no visible traces save a group of temples. The houses have vanished. But while the houses of Pompeii have survived the race that lived in them, the Japanese have come to greatness, though the fragile houses that sheltered their childhood have left no trace behind. Their strength has been and is in their habit of filial reverence and service, their disciplined capacity of endurance, their skill in applying ideas to life. Kyoto.